Fears & Phobias
Hypnosis for Phobias: 89 Sessions, and How to Pick the Right One
Eighty-nine sessions isn’t a choice, it’s a wall. So this page sorts them by the situation you actually avoid, tells you what the research does and doesn’t support, and says plainly when the answer isn’t a recording at all.
Twelve sessions worth your time
The publisher’s fears and phobias catalogue runs to eighty-nine. These are the twelve I’d put my name next to, sorted by the situation you actually avoid rather than by the name of the phobia.
US$18.95each · one-off · about A$27 · the two five-session packs are US$59.95
Find the one that fits ↓Every session is an instant MP3 from the publisher, with ninety days to change your mind. Checkout opens on hypnosisdownloads.com in a new tab.
Chosen by Ernest McLeodClinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. About Ernest →
We earn a commission if you buy through the links on this page. It doesn’t change what you pay, and it doesn’t decide what gets recommended. Prices are the publisher’s, in US dollars.
Which fears and phobias session should you start with?
First, is it a phobia at all?A phobia attaches to something you can name — a needle, a lift, a plane. If yours doesn’t, and it follows you around or turns up without a trigger, the anxiety sessions are the right shelf. If the attacks come out of nowhere, start with panic attacks.
Pick by the situation you actually avoid, not by the name of the phobia. If the fortnight before a flight is worse than the flight itself, start with Fear of Flying rather than a general anxiety session. The anticipation, not the aeroplane, is what these sessions are built to reach.
If your fear turns up with no trigger you can name, you want Stop Panic Attacks instead of any single-phobia session. And if you go faint around needles or blood, read the applied tension technique further down before you buy anything at all. It’s free, and for fainters it matters more than any recording.
| If this is your situation… | Start with | Why this one |
|---|---|---|
| You cancel flights, or spend the fortnight before one unable to sleep or eat | Fear of Flying | Targets the anticipation as well as the flight — for most people the dread beforehand is the worse half |
| You’ve dodged blood tests, vaccinations or IVs for years | Fear of Needles | Built for the avoidance pattern, not just the moment of the injection. Read the tension technique below first if you faint |
| You won’t drive, or you take long detours to avoid highways and bridges | Fear of Driving | Handles the anticipatory route-planning that keeps the fear alive between journeys |
| Lifts, tunnels, MRI scanners or small rooms make you feel trapped | Claustrophobia | Works on the trapped sensation itself, which transfers across every enclosed space rather than one |
| You’re frightened of being sick, or of other people being sick | Fear of Vomiting | Emetophobia drives eating, travel and social avoidance far beyond the fear itself, so it needs its own session |
| You’ve put off dental work until something hurts | Dental Phobia | The one phobia where hypnosis has the strongest evidence — see the research section below |
| Balconies, glass lifts, bridges or tall buildings are off-limits | Fear of Heights | The most commonly searched fear of all, and one of the most responsive to graded work |
| A spider in the room ends your evening | Fear of Spiders | Animal phobias respond well precisely because the trigger is specific and containable |
| The fear arrives out of nowhere, with no trigger you can name | Stop Panic Attacks | This isn’t a phobia — it’s fear of the panic itself, and a single-phobia session won’t touch it |
| Your world has shrunk: shops, transport, queues, or leaving home at all | Agoraphobia | Start here, and please read the “when to see someone” section — this one has a real threshold |
| You have several fears rather than one | Beat Fear and Anxiety Pack | Five sessions for US$59.95 rather than five at US$18.95 — and multiple fears usually share one root |
| Panic is the main event, whatever sets it off | Overcome Panic Attacks Pack | Approaches panic from several angles, which matters when one framing doesn’t land |
Why does the fear come back stronger each time?
Because escaping works, briefly. Fear rises, peaks and comes down on its own if you stay put, but almost nobody stays long enough to find that out. You leave, the relief arrives within seconds, and your brain files leaving as the thing that saved you. Do that a few times and the circle of what feels safe starts to shrink.
The next episode starts higher than the last. That loop — not the spider, not the aeroplane — is what every session below is aimed at.
The pattern under all ten sessionsEvery one of them works the same loop: take enough heat out of the fear that you can stay where you are, and let the curve fall on its own instead of cutting it short.
The ten sessions, and what they cost
Every session below is US$18.95, downloads instantly as an MP3, and carries the publisher’s 90-day money-back guarantee. Seven are narrated by Roger Elliott and three by Mark Tyrrell — both co-founders of the publisher, and both practising therapists.
There are 79 more sessions in this category. If your fear isn’t one of the ten here, use the search box further down.
Overcome Fear of Flying
For the fortnight of dread before the flight, not just the two hours in the air.
Cure Fear of Needles
For the blood test you have rescheduled three times and the vaccination you keep putting off.
Overcome Fear of Driving
For the detours, the refused lifts, and the stretch of highway you haven’t used in years.
Overcoming Claustrophobia
For lifts, tunnels and MRI scanners — the feeling of being shut in with no way out.
Fear of Vomiting
For the fear that quietly reorganises what you eat, where you go and who you sit near.
Overcome Fear of the Dentist
For the appointment you keep not making, until something finally starts to hurt.
Overcome Fear of Heights
For balconies, bridges and glass lifts, and the pull you feel standing anywhere near an edge.
Spider Phobia Cure
For the one in the corner that ends the evening and follows you to bed.
Stop Panic Attacks
For fear that arrives with no trigger, in a supermarket aisle or at three in the morning.
Overcoming Agoraphobia
For a world that has been shrinking — shops, then transport, then the front door.
If you have more than one fear
Two packs at US$59.95, which comes out cheaper than four singles. Several fears usually share one root, so a pack tends to do more than three singles chosen at random.
Beat Fear and Anxiety Pack
For general fear and anxiety that isn’t pinned to one place, object or situation.
Overcome Panic Attacks Pack
Five angles on panic, including the breathing exercise, for when one framing doesn’t land and you want another.
Why use a recording at all instead of seeing someone?
If you got here by searching for a hypnotherapist near you, that instinct is sound. Someone in the room with you, working to your particular fear, can do things a recording can’t, and in Australia that runs A$150 to A$250 a session. It takes three or four of those, and it means telling a stranger about something you’ve spent years arranging your life to hide.
A lot of people stall right there, and that stall is the real story of this category. Specific phobias are common, commoner than most people assume, and the great majority of those who have one never get any help for it.
Not because help doesn’t exist. Because the distance between “this is ruining things” and “I have booked an appointment” is enormous, and most people never cross it.
What the recording is actually for
A US$18.95 recording you can use tonight, in your own house, with nobody knowing, is a much smaller step. That’s its honest value. Not that it’s the strongest thing you could do about a phobia — that it’s the thing people actually do.
What’s left of this page is the research as it really stands, four things worth trying before you spend anything, and the point where a download stops being the right thing to buy.
Why is the week before worse than the thing itself?
Because your body is rehearsing something that hasn’t happened yet. Anticipatory anxiety runs on the same machinery as the event — raised heart rate, broken sleep, no appetite, nausea — except that it runs for days instead of for minutes, and there is nowhere to put it. People routinely describe the fortnight before a flight as worse than the flight.
Two hours of being frightened has an end built into it. Two weeks of dreading doesn’t.
This matters for choosing a session. Almost everything written about phobias addresses the feared moment, which is a very small part of the year. The dread beforehand is where most of the suffering actually sits.
It’s also the half a recording can reach, because something you use nightly for a fortnight has an obvious advantage over an appointment you had once.
Does hypnosis actually work for phobias?
Partly, and less well than exposure therapy. The strongest evidence in this whole field is for graded exposure — a 2008 review of 33 controlled trials found large effects that kept improving after treatment had ended. Hypnosis has moderate-certainty evidence for managing acute anxiety during a feared procedure, and reviews consistently find it works better alongside CBT than on its own.
As a stand-alone fix for a specific phobia, it isn’t established.
The dental research is worth singling out, because it’s the most careful work in the category. A 2024 review in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders pooled 67 trials and found hypnosis was one of only two interventions with moderate-certainty evidence for acute anxiety during oral surgery.
For entrenched dental phobia, though, CBT was the supported approach and hypnosis wasn’t.
The honest summary of the evidenceThat distinction runs right across the category: hypnosis is better evidenced for getting you through the thing than for permanently rewriting how you feel about it.
The finding nobody selling these mentions
Response varies with how hypnotically responsive you happen to be. In a long-running study of 178 flying-phobia patients, those who scored as hypnotisable were more than two and a half times as likely to report the session helped.
Nobody can tell you in advance which group you’re in. I can’t, and neither can the publisher — which is why the refund policy matters here more than any sales copy on the subject, mine included.
The NHS lists hypnotherapy among the options for phobias, alongside talking therapies and medication. That’s a fair place to put it: a low-cost, low-risk thing to try, which may take enough edge off the fear to make the exposure work possible. Not a substitute for it.
What can you do tonight without buying anything?
Four things, none of them costing anything, and all four have real evidence behind them. Give them a fortnight before you spend a cent. If they turn out to be enough on their own, you’ve saved your money and I’ve sold you nothing, which from where I sit is a perfectly good outcome.
Do them in whatever order suits you, with one exception: if you go faint around blood or needles, start with the first. That’s a different physiology, and the other three won’t touch it.
- Applied tension — counterintuitive, and the one that works for fainters
It raises blood pressure enough to block the faint. Sit down, tense the muscles of your arms, torso and legs for 10–15 seconds until you feel warmth in your face, release for 20–30 seconds, repeat five times. Practise three times a day the week beforehand; on the day, tense legs and stomach — not the arm taking the needle.
- Build a fear ladder
List what you avoid, score each 0–100 for distress, then break the goal into steps by changing who’s with you, how long you stay, and when you go. Climb one rung, repeat it until the number drops, then move up. This is graded exposure, and it’s the best-evidenced thing on this page.
- Slow the out-breath
In through the nose for four, hold for two, out for six. Practise it when you’re calm, not only in a crisis — it doesn’t work well as an emergency measure you’ve never rehearsed.
- Cap the checking, and book a worry window
Limit flight-tracking, symptom-Googling and weather-watching to once a day, and set aside ten minutes at a fixed time to do the worrying deliberately. The checking feels like preparation. It’s rehearsal.
Two things not to do. Don’t go hunting for images of the thing you’re afraid of to “desensitise” yourself. That isn’t graded exposure, it’s an ambush, and you may not be ready for what you find.
And go carefully with props. The wristband, the lucky seat, the person who always comes with you: each one makes today easier and next month harder.
When should you see someone instead of using a recording?
A recording suits an ordinary phobia: a fear attached to one identifiable thing, in someone whose life otherwise runs. Plenty of what brings people to this page isn’t that. When the fear is blocking medical care, when it followed a trauma, when your world has already shrunk, or when there are several fears rather than one, the answer is a person rather than a purchase — someone who can sit with you week to week and work to what you bring in.
That’s what I’d tell you on the phone before I said a word about a download. A session bought instead of an appointment tends to move the appointment six months to the right, which is the cost nobody counts. Book an appointment rather than buying a session if any of the following is true of you.
- Your fear is stopping necessary medical care — vaccinations, blood tests, scans, dental work.
- You faint around blood or injections. That’s a different physiology and it needs the tension technique above, often with supervision.
- The phobia started after a trauma, or arrives with intrusive memories.
- You’re housebound, or you need someone with you to leave the house.
- You’re using alcohol or sedatives to get through the feared situation.
- You have several phobias rather than one — that usually signals something broader underneath.
When a recording isn’t the right callIf you have a diagnosed mental health condition, are under a professional’s care, or have epilepsy, check with your doctor before using hypnosis recordings.
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Over half a million people have used these hypnosis sessions.
What are you looking for?
Common questions about hypnosis for fears and phobias
Will I lose control while I’m hypnotised?
No. You stay aware the whole way through and can stop the recording whenever you like. Hypnosis is focused, relaxed attention — closer to being absorbed in a film than to being unconscious. Nothing can be made to happen that you don’t want, and you can’t get stuck in it.
Can everyone be hypnotised?
Almost everyone can enter the state — it’s ordinary, not exotic. You’ve been somewhere close to it any time you’ve driven a familiar route and arrived without remembering the journey. Depth varies between people, and research suggests those who go deeper tend to get more from it, which is part of why results differ.
How many times do I need to listen?
The publisher suggests several listens rather than one, and in practice most people use a session nightly for a week or two before the thing they’re dreading. That fits what the research shows: more repetition, better outcomes. Treat one listen as a trial, not a test.
What if it doesn’t work for me?
You get your money back. The publisher offers a 90-day refund, no questions asked. Given that response genuinely varies between people, that policy is doing more work than any promise on this page — it’s what makes trying it a low-risk decision rather than a gamble.
Is hypnotherapy better than exposure therapy?
No. Graded exposure has the stronger evidence for specific phobias by a clear margin, and it’s the first-line treatment. Hypnosis is better evidenced as something that reduces anxiety in the moment, or that works alongside CBT rather than instead of it. If you can access exposure-based therapy, do that first.
Why did my phobia start in the first place?
Often a single frightening event that your brain generalised from — one bad flight, one bad injection — and sometimes no identifiable event at all. The median age of onset is around eight, so many people have carried theirs since childhood without a memory attached to it. Not knowing why doesn’t stop it being treatable.
Do phobias get worse over time?
The fear itself often doesn’t, but avoidance does. Every time you dodge the situation, the relief teaches your brain that dodging worked, so the circle of what feels safe quietly shrinks. That’s why the free fear ladder above matters more than it looks — it interrupts the pattern that keeps the phobia fed.
Is it safe to use a hypnosis recording at home?
For most people, yes — reviews of clinical hypnosis have found no evidence of significant adverse effects. Don’t listen while driving or operating anything. If you have a diagnosed mental health condition, are under a professional’s care, or have epilepsy, speak to your doctor first.
Related categories
- AnxietyFive sessions for anxiety that doesn’t attach to one thing — the worry that changes subject, the dread before a dated event, rooms with people in them, health worry that survives an all-clear, and thinking that won’t switch off.
- Panic attacksThe bridge between the two. If the attacks arrive without a trigger you can name, start here rather than with a named phobia.
- Fear of giving birthThe largest trial found birth rated more positively. Not less pain. Both matter.
Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice.
- ICHP
- FELLOW, ASCH
- IICT MEMBER
Eighty-nine sessions sit in this category. Sorting them — which situation each one fits, which ones never make the list — is the job. I made none of them. More about me →
Ninety days to change your mind. If a session doesn’t do what you wanted, email the publisher your order number and they’ll refund you in full — no questions asked, one refund per customer. That is the publisher’s promise, in the publisher’s terms.
These are self-help audio sessions, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. If your symptoms are severe or persistent, please speak to a doctor or a qualified therapist.
Written by Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. Last updated 2026-08-13.